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Don’t Spam Your Resume-There are no Hail Mary passes in Job Searching

Makes me smile every time I watch that clip. Wow, they achieved the possible but highly improbable outcome and won the game with 0 seconds on the clock.

These days it is a Hail Mary just to send in a resume for a job posting you are qualified for, because there are 1,473 others hoping to make the catch along side you.

One of the problems with job boards and online job sites is the ease of submitting ones resume. It only takes a click, attache a resume and off it goes. It is so easy to fling that Hail Mary resume out there.

Maybe the thinking is, “I shouldn’t submit my resume, I’m not qualified for this job, but who knows, Doug Flutie scored a touchdown on a pass that shouldn’t have been caught, so what the heck”.

I can understand the urge, but don’t do it. 100% of the time you won’t get the job. It’s not the same thing.

Dan Schawbel just wrote a piece about The Demise of the Job Boards…. In it he refers to a women that has sent her resume out 1,700 times. Could she have been a fit for all of those jobs? No Way.

I suggest that a better use of time would be to research to determine which companies fit her requirements first. Once the list of companies has been defined, it becomes about references, referrals, affinity groups, the professional graph and personal contact. Work your network out to three degrees and find your best connection to the hiring manager. Ultimately, it is all about minimizing the perceived risk for the hiring manager. ( A lot more can be said on this topic in another article).

Back to the subject at hand, don’t spam your resume. Concentrate on the opportunities with the higher probability of fit and success that are based on minimizing the hiring mangers risk by building or mining connections from you to them.

Spend your time with opportunities that have your highest probability of success, rather than tossing your resume out to places that you have 0% chance of getting hired.

At the minimum, be a good fit for the job, otherwise you have zero chance.